


stay with me till my talk gets strange

by jokeperalta



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, One Shot, Psychological Trauma, Sharing a Bed, Spooning, i'm sorry @ the boys, pre-slash maybe?? it's... something. something is going on.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 04:29:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14512566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jokeperalta/pseuds/jokeperalta
Summary: Something goes badly wrong on a shoot. Shane tries to look after Ryan.





	stay with me till my talk gets strange

**Author's Note:**

> i always hate myself a lil bit when i fall into the RPF trap but these two have given me the first inspiration for literally anything i've had in about two months so i had to follow where it led
> 
> this is based on fictionalised versions of ryan and shane and is written from a place of great love and respect for them. and also i'm sorry lol.
> 
> title from I Am That by The Fratellis which you should also listen to because it was really the driving force behind writing this

 

 

“Ryan?” Shane says, low and soft. He can’t put it off any longer. “I’m going to take a shower now, I’ll leave the door open a bit so just shout if you need anything, yeah?”

It doesn’t seem like Ryan hears him. Silence drags over the hotel room.

He tries again. “Ryan?”

“Okay.”

It’s the first word Ryan’s said to him since he was discharged from the hospital. To anyone, as far as Shane knows, barring the quiet phone call in the hotel bathroom to his mom that Shane tried not to overhear.

Shane still doesn’t think Ryan heard what he just agreed to.

(God, he wishes it had been him down there.)

“Okay,” Shane repeats. “I won’t be long.”

In the bathroom, he stares down his reflection. His clothes are dirty and cling to him uncomfortably. His face is still smeared in dirt from the ship, and his eyes are red-rimmed from stress and exhaustion.

He doesn’t know what time it is. Nothing much feels real.

Shane strips and stands under the shower spray. The hot water runs down his hands and stings the raw scrapes and cuts on his palms and finger tips. It’s the first time he’s been aware of them since he got them, clawing at the solid door of the hold and doing nothing except pulling away bits of rust.

He closes his eyes. Lets the water drip down his face.

It should have been him trapped in there. He would have hated it, been scared out of his mind -like anyone- but it would have been easier on him than on Ryan. Ryan’s mind leads itself in loops at the best of times.

It hurts to think how terrified he must have been down there.

He remembers little of what happened between realising the door was jammed shut with rust and completely immobile with Ryan on the other side (for a stupid lock in for a stupid show that they don’t get paid enough for to be doing this shit) and the fire crew pulling him out an hour and a half later. All he really remembers is Ryan’s face behind the porthole -the terror in his eyes- and how hard he was shaking when they got him out.

Shane shuts off the water.

When he emerges, in a t-shirt and sweats, Ryan hasn’t moved. He has the blankets tucked under his chin, prone almost foetal on his side, and unblinking.

Shane doesn’t know what to do. Has zero instincts, zero insight into what what would help.

The crew said their phones would be on and next to them all night if he or Ryan needed anything at all, but as much as he knows they meant it— Shane _shouldn’t_ need them for this, shouldn’t need back up just to comfort one of his best friends in the world.

He feels shitty. Like a shitty friend- and person, frankly. And shittier still for making this about him and his hang ups when it’s Ryan that’s been traumatised.

Everything that makes them successful on camera together -that makes them _them_ – is useless when the chips are down.

(And yet… somehow he knows Ryan would say and do everything exactly right if their situations were reversed. Him and his natural warmth, the kind and deeply human way he has about him. Shane is all angles, all chaotic thoughts and stuttered words when it comes to anything of any importance.)

Shane folds his legs under him on his bed, checking his phone without taking in any of the information it gives him.

He doesn’t know if Ryan is still awake or not.

“Do you- do you need anything?” Shane tries. He feels every inflection, every uncertain break in his voice as though it reverberates all the way through him. “Can I do anything?”

Shane waits. There’s just dead silence. It feels like an age and Shane thinks he must be asleep, or otherwise not wanting to talk to him. He doesn’t blame him.

“Would it be weird—” Shane hears as he’s shuffling under his blankets. It’s so quiet Shane has to stop moving entirely to be sure he heard it. “Would it be weird if you slept here tonight?”

He hasn’t slept in almost twenty hours, his brain moving through sludge as it works out that ‘here’ means Ryan’s bed. Shane puts away the jolt of shock away quickly, because it’s unhelpful.

“I can do that,” Shane says.

“It’s just- I don’t want to be alone when I wake up.”

“You don’t need to explain,” Shane tells him quickly, mainly because he can’t stand how small and afraid Ryan’s voice sounds.

It’s wrong, and Shane knows that because Shane’s seen Ryan scared a hundred times. It makes him loud and it makes him swear like a sailor and it makes him insult Shane even more than usual. The wrongness of it -this quiet, vulnerable terror- tears at his insides.

Shane gets into the other side of Ryan’s bed, a careful distance away, and turns the bedside lamp off. Ryan tenses up and it occurs to Shane too late he should have asked before plunging the room into darkness.

“Are you okay?”

The back of Ryan’s head jerks in a short, fierce nod. “I will be.”

“Yeah, you will,” Shane agrees quietly.

He touches Ryan’s shoulder, squeezes once. He runs his hand between Ryan’s shoulder and elbow: slowly, back and forth. His scraped fingertips are hypersensitive to the feel of Ryan’s skin beneath them.

He hears Ryan breathe out.

When the impulse to move closer strikes, Shane is too tired to quell it. He shifts over, fitting his long legs behind Ryan’s – just a few centimetres away. Shane feels Ryan’s body heat on his torso.

“… Shane?”

Shane understands the question Ryan doesn’t ask. They’ve shared beds, floors, even a very small tent before but never out of anything but necessity and never this close. Pillow walls border the territory of each other’s personal space wherever possible.

“Let’s not think about it,” Shane offers sleepily.

Ryan makes a low noise of assent that Shane feels in his own belly.

He’s so fucking tired, he thinks he could sleep for a year- right here in a mediocre hotel room bed with his hand on Ryan’s arm and his forehead on the nape of Ryan’s neck. He could sleep here forever. Let archaeologists excavate their bodies a thousand years from now, fused together like this for centuries like the people at Pompeii. Let them be a fucking tourist attraction, if it means they can just _sleep_.

"Shane?"

"Hm?"

Ryan mumbles something soft and low into his pillow that Shane can't make out even a single word of, but Shane thinks he understands what he means just the same.

 


End file.
